


All the Pretty Houses

by JazzBaby466



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Banter, Case Fic, F/M, Long, Mild Sexual Content, No Sexual Violence, graphic description of violence, platonic Stephen/Conway, with a personal plot line
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 05:32:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15767613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzBaby466/pseuds/JazzBaby466
Summary: "I’d spent so much time on the job making myself into who people wanted me to be, it had become second nature. But suddenly, my mind was like a derailed train, flying off the tracks. Carriages flipping over and tumbling into each other to form a pile of wreckage. A proper crash. Lights out."Stephen and Conway are trying to find out who kicked first-year student Ben O'Donovan to death right on Trinity's well-kept front lawn, when a woman comes back into Stephen's life out of nowhere, bearing news that threaten to change everything he knows in a drastic way, with no way to return.





	All the Pretty Houses

**Author's Note:**

> I reread The Secret Place to write this, took notes. I tried to get as close to Stephen's voice as I could. I also tried to nail that case/ personal problem combination that Tana writes so well. What I'm trying to say is: I'd appreciate the hell out of comments and kudos, for this one more than ever.
> 
> PS: I thought forever about whether or not to split this up into chapters. It didn't feel natural, so I didn't. But beware that this is a long one. Maybe consider reading it in more than one sitting.

The thing with Ceara Harrington happened some time in December when I hadn’t been on the squad for long. I had been there long enough for the new, shiny feeling of being one of the Murder lads to come off; not long enough to fully feel a part of it yet.

Antoinette and I, though, we had our rhythm, same as that first day at St. Kilda’s. When I went back to Cold Cases, it had all started to feel like a dream. I was getting doubts, thinking maybe I’d enhanced things in my mind, seen us click in a way we never really had. Then, after I’d convinced myself that no, we’d been good together, I started to worry that maybe it had been a one-time thing. Even more importantly, that she had reached the same conclusion.

But I made Murder all the same, just like she’d promised, and it took about five minutes with her for all those worries to evaporate like water drops on a hot plate. She and I, whether we liked it or not, we made a good team.

December, I said, so think clammy, think too much wind and near-constant rain outside, everything, every street, every bench, every bridge, every lamp post damp and uninviting. Even more importantly, think: pre-Christmas madness outside. The stores were going for a festive atmosphere and giving it their all with those shiny decorations and the fairy lights and colorful baubles and fake Christmas trees, but you’d have to be delusional to think of rainy Dublin as some kind of winter wonderland. The streets were more crowded than ever with everyone trying to get their presents bought. People were shoving past each other hectically on O’Connell and Grafton Street, heads down, elbows at their sides, hands deep in their pockets. Everybody in everybody else’s way. Sometimes, it stopped feeling liking individual people running errands and felt more like one big, sluggish organism trying to make its way through the city, and with the way everybody was going off in different directions as fast as they could but nobody walking in the same, in the end it felt like things weren’t moving at all.

Which was, incidentally, exactly how our case was going, too.

The other thing about those few days before Christmas is that everybody on the squad is pissed off one way or another. Those who were given a few days off had the impending doom of too much time with the family hanging over their heads. Let’s be honest, no one on Murder is used to that, and the crazy is strong with most families that time of year. Those who had to work had to endure their wives’ bitching. McCann’s missus is a real broken record about this, giving him shite for being married to the job instead of to her lovely self every time she opens her mouth, I hear.

Antoinette and I hadn’t been given any time off, naturally. People figured we were both single, no kids, no harm in keeping us over the holidays. I didn’t mind, though. My mum had given me a bit of a bollocking over the phone. This had been a good opportunity for her to make two points at once. One being that I - her words, not mine - work too much; the second being the fact that at thirty-three I’m not married yet and, far as I can tell, it won’t be happening anytime soon, either. I had reminded her, polite as I could, that I had finally made Murder, which, frankly, was everything I had worked for all these years, and she had backed off eventually. All in all, Antoinette and I didn’t mind spending Christmas in the squad room. In fact, we might still be working our current case then, judging by the pace at which things were coming along. 

While Antoinette and I were getting nowhere, though, the rest of the squad room had that high-energy fever feel to it, like a note was being played at a pitch too high to hear, but not too high to feel, at some subconscious level, whirring through the air, making everyone edgy as hell. The pace at Murder is always fast; keep up or fuck right off, back to your old squad. This was a new extreme, though. I suppose every once in a while some high-profile case comes in that makes everyone feel like they’ve been charged twice their regular voltage, no matter whether they’re actually working the case or not, but I hadn’t been on Murder long enough to know. This case was the biggest I’d seen so far and Breslin and McCann were the ones working it. They were the best horses in the stable, as far as the gaffer was concerned, so it was no wonder he’d put them on it. Still, I’d caught the look on Antoinette’s face: her lips a thin line, eyes hard as granite. Flicker of envy. It was ridiculous and she knew that as well as I did, which was why she kept her mouth shut about it. But she’d wanted this one.

It was a kid case. The kid ones are always insane. Lots of media, lots of pressure. Fuck up and it could mean the end of your career. A four-year-old boy had been found in some ditch in Wicklow, strangled. Another one was missing already, four days later. Three years old only, this one. High pressure, like I said, and the papers were all over it. As much as I tried to focus on our case instead of this one, some things were impossible to miss, so even I knew that the missing kid’s name was Logan. The papers loved that, too, because it made for a nice alliteration. _Little Logan_ this, _Little Logan_ that, _Little Logan’s_ big brown eyes staring at you from every newspaper stand in the city. I knew Antoinette was only desperate to get her hands on something big to prove her worth, but I for one was glad we weren’t working this one. Like I said, this was a case to make or break you, especially if you were newbie, which I was, of course. As was Antoinette, as much as she hated to admit it.

Since the boy was missing, Murder and Missing Persons were working this one together, which made for even more madness. Everybody knows that joint investigations are from hell, and this one was no exception. They were mostly working out of the Murder rooms, which seemed like a bad omen and would have probably freaked Logan’s parents out, had they known. For us, it meant lads from Missing Persons running in and out of the squad room with worried frowns plastered to their faces. No matter how experienced Breslin and McCann were, Christmas madness plus joint investigation plus missing three-year-old equaled a big messy heap of chaos.

“Fuck’s _sake_ ”, Antoinette said under her breath when more people with that standard-issue important look on their faces walked past us and one of them knocked some of her notes off her desk and didn’t bother to stop and pick them up.

“If we at least had an incident room”, I agreed.

“Or floaters”, she added, rolling her eyes and indicating the papers on her desk with a tilt of her chin. “For the shit jobs, like this one.”

Little Logan and the dead kid, whose name I don’t remember, were taking up a lot of capacities. Incident rooms, floaters, tip lines. Ireland only gets a big case like this with a pervy serial killer and dead children at its center every once in a while. Naturally, all eyes were on it.

Our case was harmless in comparison. Just some college kid getting his head kicked to mush on the lawn right in front of Trinity college. If it weren’t for the other case, we would have probably had some media attention, too. The vic, Benedict O’Donovan, was only eighteen; young and handsome enough. And the bizarre thing, the thing that the newspapers would have been all over normally, was the fact that he had been killed around one in the morning and only been discovered by a student at six thirty-four, hours later, meaning there had been a dead body on that pretty lawn right in front of Trinity College for several hours that night. He had died close to the wall and not been visible from the streets. Still, plenty of people had walked past, no idea there was a corpse only a few feet from them, and those were the details that people were only delighted to hear because they gave them that pleasurable little chill.

Breslin and McCann’s case meant less eyes on us, which Antoinette hated and I liked. In a way, I was still getting settled. While she was itching for a tough case, I wanted to work on my solve rate. Get it up, slow and steady, build a solid base, let everything else grow from there. When I had first met Antoinette, she had been on the Murder squad for a year without a single solve. I had never wanted to be in that position. The gaffer was constantly throwing domestics our way. Those were easy enough, with the killer offering his own head on a silver plate most of the time, dripping snot and tears onto our desks and telling us all about how he hadn’t meant to, it wasn’t ever meant to happen like that and anyway, she had been a real bitch in the end there so could we please understand. Most of them wanted to be forgiven. I know what people want. I’m good at making them think I’ll give it to them. Antoinette knows that, and as much as she despises the scum bags for butchering their own wives with a steak knife, she lets me hold their hands and nod with compassion until they’ve spilled their guts to us and we can slap on the cuffs and hand them over to the judge.

“What are you working on there?”, I asked her, leaning forward to get a look at those papers on her desk.

“Going through his emails”, she explained and let out a long breath. “Most boring shite you’ve ever seen. Mostly to professors, asking about word counts and extensions. Some to people from his course about some group project - that one killed me, it took them about a million emails to figure out who was going to write up the bibliography or some shit like that - friends he met when he was travelling, and some cousins from Spain.”

“No dates for Monday night, but.”

“No dates for Monday night”, she confirmed.

We had organized our theories into a list (keep the gaffer happy, keep your thoughts ordered), and our main lines of investigation were these:

One: the killer was somebody the victim knew. He had been grabbed by the shoulders and shoved against Trinity’s outer wall first, banged his head on the stone hard, gone down. According to Cooper, he hadn’t been dead then, but a few hard kicks to the head had taken care of that. The two had perhaps met up outside of the college deliberately. Why in the middle of the night, we had no idea. Maybe to have some kind of a talk. Or they had simply bumped into each other. Either way, the conversation had escalated, somehow.

Two: The killer had been some randomer our boy had bumped into on his way back to the residence halls. Somehow, they had started talking and got into a fight. Clearly, the randomer was a person with a temper on him. Our boy had said something he didn’t like, and he’d lost the head. And kicked in Ben O’Donovan’s.

Lastly and most gloriously of all: drugs. Something happens that time of night, drugs are usually on the list of ideas. Like I said, the level of aggression suggested history between the killer and the vic, but people on drug-fueled rages do all levels of crazy, too.

“Just like the texts”, I said, nodding thoughtfully. If Ben had agreed to meet the killer (and outside of Trinity at that time seemed like a strange meeting place to me, but college kids in their first year, I won’t pretend I understand it all), we should have been able to find some record of it. A text, or an email, some way they had set up the meeting. So far, we had only found texts from one of his mates, asking him to meet him at somebody else’s place for drinks. They were all eighteen, so below legal drinking age. Otherwise, they would have probably gone for a pint in some pub.

I said: “Maybe it was some stranger, after all.”

Antoinette was giving it skeptical. “And what did Ben say, to piss him enough to get killed twenty seconds after first meeting him?”

 _Him,_ I thought, but didn’t say. The strength behind those kicks also suggested a male killer, according to Cooper, but these things never sit well with Antoinette. She hates women being ruled out for physical reasons like this. Still, just like me, deep down, she thought we were looking at a guy.

“No”, she was going on. “These two had history, one way or another. Maybe they bumped into each other unexpectedly. Maybe they never set up the meeting. But they knew each other, alright.”

“If they knew each other and bumped into each other without first setting up a meeting, right outside of Trinity...”, I started and she looked up and finished the sentence for me.

“Chances are it was one of the other students, yes. Have another good look at those statements while I go through the last of these bleeding no-info emails, yeah? Then, we can have a few more chats.”

I tried to hide the look on my face; she caught it anyway and clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Look, I know you don’t like them for it. I know you’d rather some homeless junkie did this. But you need to get over yourself, Steve, because I’d bet a good sum that our killer is some cute little posh kid studying theatre or whatever and sleeping snug and warm behind those beautiful walls each night.”

I held her gaze, trying to fight off the uncomfortable deja vu feelings washing over me. Back at St. Kilda’s, I’d only seen old beautiful stone and books and antique desks and straight teeth and shiny violin cases, and Conway had laughed in my face for it. She had been right, of course. This, as much as I hated it, might well be more of the same.

“Could be”, I nodded. “I’ll go over these, pick out a few people for chats. Does that sound alright?”

She watched me closely for hidden signs of defiance, found nothing, gave me a brisk nod. “Sounds good. I need to get out of here anyway, before I start shooting people.”

I had just turned my attention back to the statement sheets, when I felt the change in the air. Same way you always feel eyes on you, even in the dark. That prickle at the back of your neck. I looked up and found plenty of eyes on me, along with a few grins. Sam O’Neill was walking towards me and Antoinette’s head snapped up, too.

“Stephen”, he said pleasantly, and the sniggering intensified. I had no idea what was going on and I could see the irritated frown forming on Conway’s face.

“Howya, Sam. What is it?”

“Somebody’s here to see you”, he told me, lowering his voice tactfully. It didn’t matter. Those who wanted to know, those who were into gossip and not up to their chins in the Logan case like Breslin and McCann, had already noticed.

“Who? Did they give you a name?” I tried to keep my voice neutral, but I was certain that Antoinette could sense my confusion anyway. So could O’Neill, probably. So could everybody else in the damn room, I suppose.

O’Neill looked almost apologetic, like all of the gossip that was going to come out of this one was somehow his fault. “Ceara Harrington”, he told me, voice still considerately quiet. “She asked was Stephen Moran in. Said she knew you personally and that she needed to talk to you.”

 _Ceara Harrington._ The name hit me like the spark off an electric fence. I hadn’t heard it in ages, but hearing it now, it all came back to me. Ceara and I had been at Templemore Training College together, way back when.

“Right”, I said, trying hard for calm and composed, making it seem like somehow I had been expecting her. Without turning to look at her, I could feel Antoinette’s stare on me.

 _What the hell,_ she was thinking at me, hard. _Who the fuck is she? What is she doing here?_

 _I have no fucking idea,_ I thought back; gave her a half-apologetic shrug when O’Neill’s back was turned to me, then left the squad room to meet her outside, Antoinette’s look like daggers between my shoulder blades.

If I hadn’t known it was her, it would have taken me a moment to recognize her. She was standing there looking shorter than I remembered, anxious look in her eyes, hands deep inside her sleeves, fidgeting.

“Stephen”, she said on a breath when I closed the door behind me and that voice hit me like an electric shock all over again. Strange thing, hearing somebody’s voice after so many years. If you’d asked me before did I remember what she sounded like, I would’ve said no way. Would’ve probably sworn I didn’t remember. But as I heard it, neurons were firing, old circuits reconnecting and throwing associations and memories at me at a dizzying speed.

Ceara Harrington. Of course I remembered her. Templemore, way back in the day. I had been mostly focused on my own business back then, but she was one of those people you couldn’t help but notice.

High end of pretty; more than that, even, because she knew it and could make her looks work for her. Nowhere near as tall as I am, but tall enough. Plenty of leg, beautiful long, lean muscles. Smooth skin, nice features, long, straight hair. Blonde, with just a shine of red; nothing like my offensively bright orange.

She was so far out of my league, I never even tried to talk to her. This was back when I was always saving up money so that I could buy higher quality clothes; cutting back on plenty of other things until I could afford one of those shirts that felt like water to the touch, cool and pleasant and indestructible, hoping to God nobody would notice that I was switching back and forth between the only two good ones I owned.

Ceara didn’t have to worry about those things. Her clothes were always nice, but in that non-braggy, mindless way that said she wasn’t even trying to impress; this was normal for her. Her da was one of the Murder lads, and everyone knew. He retired years before my time, so I never even met him. Still, I remember. Some said, this was why she was in Templemore in the first place.

So I noticed her the way you _notice_ a pretty woman who has everything you have ever wanted. But we didn’t talk.

As far as I remember, Ceara was never alone. A girl like her, she didn’t have to be. If you’ve got looks and money, people will always naturally gravitate towards you and you can just take your pick. She did that, Ceara. Picked those of similar status, mostly. It may not have been on purpose. It may have come to her without thinking about it.

Back then, I used to think those people were her friends. I thought the fact that she was never alone also meant she wasn’t ever lonely, stupid me. I was mostly by myself back then, focusing on my training and hardly anything else. A lot of the people around us were precisely everything I was dog-paddling to get away from. Forever, preferably. Guys who never make it out of uniform and were fine with that. Ceara’s gang I would have liked to be near, but couldn’t afford to. Which left me awkwardly in the middle, uncomfortable either way. A few of the lads might have liked to be friends with me and it’s not like I sneered at them and walked away, but I still kept them at arm’s length with subtle means.

The night Ceara talked to me, some of them were going to the pub and although I wasn’t keen, somehow I got swept along. The place was near our main building and all sorts of people hung out there, so I wasn’t surprised when we bumped into Ceara’s lot. A few glances of recognition passed between the groups, no more. I was fine with that. Hadn’t expected anything beyond that. But Ceara seemed different that night. I knew, because I was watching. Her and the rest of them. Couldn’t help it, truth be told. She seemed a little distanced, a little withdrawn from the group. That was the first time it occurred to me that the others might not be her friends, might just be people she hung out with because they came from the same place, wore the same clothes, sounded the same.

I went to the jacks at some point and when I came back, she bumped into me. I mumbled apologies, was ready to walk past her, but out of nowhere, she held me back, the grip on my sleeve first firm, then loosening quickly again, like she had surprised herself.

“What’s your name again? “, she asked and I told her, half-expecting her to turn away after hearing one word out of my mouth.

But she didn’t. She could’ve nodded, curled up her mouth at me, even, and walked straight back to her group. _My mistake. Clearly, you and I have nothing in common._

But she didn’t. Instead, she told me her name, like I didn’t already know, and we started chatting. Kept chatting, in fact. Her group was giving us the eyebrow, collectively, and my group was giving me thumbs up and other obscene hand gestures behind her back.

I had no idea what was going on, felt like I had been tossed into a vortex. But like I said, everything about her was everything I’d ever wanted. I couldn’t have walked away from it if I tried.

What she saw in me, I couldn’t tell you. I’ve thought about it plenty, but I’m at a loss. We talked lots and the conversation must have been going well, because I remember the sound of her laughter, clear and foreign like a tender breeze running its fingers through wind chimes. Remember that glossy hair flying through the air as she tossed back her head with it. Remember staring, mesmerized, then trying not to stare. Talking some more.

The words are all gone. I can’t recall a single thing either of us said. But the feeling has stayed with me: that wonder, the carefully contained joy, like spring arriving weeks ahead of time. Look around, stare at the flowers, wonder what’s after happening and whether they’re really for you to pick.

“Ceara”, I greeted her confidentially. “What is it? Can we talk out here or do you want me to get us a room?”

The second I closed my mouth I wanted to kick myself for that particular choice of words. _Do you want me to get us a room?_ She didn’t seem to have noticed, though.

“What? Oh, no. It’s fine. Out here is fine.”

This surprised me a bit. Call me thick, but I honestly thought she had info about the case. I know, I know. Woman you slept with once shows up after more than a decade. Acts all nervous, won’t tell you what the hell is going on. It doesn’t take a genius. Personally, I blame those years in Cold Cases and the thing that happened with Holly and the card, because normally when people came to me after years, it wasn’t personal, it was about a case. This time was different, though. This time was as personal as it gets.

“What is it, Ceara?”, I asked gently, my mind still on Ben O’Donovan, turning this thing over to figure out how in the world Ceara might be involved. Something came to me suddenly and things seemed to click into place. _Harrington._ We had interviewed a girl with that name two days ago. (Melissa? Melody?) Ceara’s sister? Half-sister? Younger cousin? Maybe the girl knew something about Ben after all, had been too afraid to tell us and sent Ceara to me instead.

“Look, are you sure you don’t want to do this in an interview room?”, I asked when she didn’t reply right away. “I’ll need a proper statement anyway…”

“Statement?” Her head came up suddenly at that, those pretty eyes big and shiny with tears. That made me stop. “This isn’t about a case, Stephen! It’s personal!”

“Oh.” I stared at her like an idiot. She was fidgeting again, dropping her head and not meeting my eye, nervous as hell.

But nervous, I knew how to deal with.

“Look”, I started again, in a soothing voice. “Whatever it is, it’s alright. You can either tell me here, or, if that works better for you, we could set up another meeting – “

I was in full cop mode, and she knew that and wasn’t having it. But it was working all the same, because it was drawing her out.

“Stephen”, she said urgently, no longer choked up. “That night, do you remember?”

“Course I do.” The night at the pub and what happened after. Her hair as it ran through my fingers, cool and soft as silk. Those big eyes close to mine. I still remember it. Clear as anything.

“I got pregnant that night. You have a daughter.”

She looked up at me again and her eyes were wide. Pleading, I thought, desperate; only desperate for what, I had no idea. If I’d had even the faintest notion what she wanted to hear from me, I would have probably given it to her. I’d spent so much time on the job making myself into who people wanted me to be, it had become second nature. But suddenly, my mind was like a derailed train, flying off the tracks. Carriages flipping over and tumbling into each other to form a pile of wreckage. A proper crash. Lights out.

“Stephen?” Ceara’s voice was getting shrill. “I didn’t know how to say it, so I just said it straight out! And I’m sorry, but… Can you at least talk to me? Say something!”

“Right”, I said flatly. “Right. Thanks for telling me. See, I kind of need to get back in there.” I gestured absent-mindedly towards the squad room.

On some level I registered that she looked like I had slapped her in the face. “Are you _serious_?”

“Um, yes, actually. I have work to do, see. I’m working this case. I thought maybe you knew something, but… Anyway.”

 _You have a daughter._ I was thinking the words, but all I could see in my head was that imaginary train wreck.

“Seriously?” Even shriller now, her voice. “Did you not hear what I just said? Don’t you have anything to say to me? Don’t you want to know her name, at least?”

“Right”, I said again, forcing the world around me back into focus. “How’s this? We can meet up tonight, when I get off work, talk about this properly.”

She stared at me a little longer, eyes still shiny, lips pressed together. “Fine”, she said then, more softly, not as shrill. Apologetic, even. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t know how to break the news gently, so I just said it. I’ll tell you everything you want to know when we meet up tonight, okay?”

I nodded and we agreed on a place (pub near her home; not a cop pub, as far as I knew), and a time (after I got off work). She gave me her phone number, and one awkward good-bye later (handshake too formal, hug too intimate; we settled for a strange wave) I was back in the squad room, where I was greeted with whistling and verbal mockery.

“Rule Number One: Never tell last night’s woman where you work.”

“Rookie mistake, Moran. Classic rookie mistake.”

“Fair play, though. I’ve seen uglier birds.”

“Easy on the eye, that one. If you’re done with her, give her my number?”

I walked past them, didn’t say anything. Back in our corner, Antoinette’s face was a mask.

“Who was that?”, she asked as soon as I sat back down. Voice relatively low, but enough people were paying enough attention to hear anyway.

“Ow, _ow_!” Roche started making hissy cat noises, along with a few predictable comments about Antoinette being jealous and maybe if she didn’t want to share her lapdog (me) with anybody, we could get some sort of mad three-way going. She ignored him, but I could see the willpower it took. Roche and her had history and he had been a right prick to her for months. He added a few especially nasty comments about menopause and if she didn’t want me to go for the younger ones than she should probably start using more product, and I could see her open her mouth to fire back at him.

“Leave it”, I said quickly. “Let’s just finish up here, yeah?”

Roche needed a good kick up the arse, for that lapdog comment alone, but this was low by his standards so not exactly worth the hassle.

“I’ll leave him”, Antoinette replied, turning her attention back to me. “If you tell me who the hell that woman was.”

“I know her from training. We haven’t talked in ages.”

“Then what did she want?”

“I’d rather tell you later.”

“Tough. I want to know now.”

Our eyes locked. We were both trying to stare each other out of it and somewhere at the periphery of my perception, I heard Roche continue to make fucked-up comments about the two of us.

“Antoinette”, I said then, breaking away first. “Later. Not here. Please.”

She stared a little longer, took a deep breath. Shrugged. “Fine. But in that case, stop looking like your dead granny just appeared to you and get back to work. Can you manage that?”

“Just about.”

She forgave me for the extra bit of bitchiness, or at least she didn’t say anything about it.

Somehow, I managed to block everything I had just heard from my mind. Same thing you do in an interview. You despise the fucker sitting in front of you, but you want to get the confession more than anything, so you block that contempt from your mind, play it extra nice, pretend your full of compassion and love. You make yourself into their buddy or their mummy or whoever it is they are dying to get understanding and forgiveness from. And while you do it, it’s vital to keep everything you’re actually feeling locked in a small box deep inside. So I took that sentence Ceara had said, four explosive words with the power to shake anybody’s world, and I wrapped them in bubble wrap, stuck some tape around the whole thing, nice and neat, and locked them in that same box, deep down.

I kept that box locked while I picked out more people for follow-up interviews and put their statement sheets into a folder. Kept it locked all the way to Trinity and throughout our chats with them, too. Thought about nothing other than who had killed Ben O’Donovan on Monday night.

“Kid gets kicked to death right in front of this place and no-fucking-body has seen anything”, Antoinette growled on our way back out.

“Ah, sure, some cases”, I started, but she cut me right off and whipped her head around to me.

“Oh, no. Don’t fucking give me that ‘some cases are just like that’ shite. I don’t buy it. In fact, I’d bet my tits somebody in there has seen something, and I don’t know who to be more pissed off with. Them for not talking to us or us for failing to make them.”

She had a point. All these kids living in the residence halls right on campus, and nobody had seen anything? In my head, I started going through the ones we had just talked to, trying to decide if anybody had seemed that extra bit more intimidated, wound that extra bit tighter. I was still flipping through their faces in my mind, when Antoinette stopped suddenly.

“Looks like we’re alone now”, she said coolly. “So about earlier. Before we drive back to HQ. Tell me. What the fuck?”

And just like that, she kicked the lock of that box and the words flung themselves at me. _You have a daughter._ I had to keep myself from just shouting them out.

“Ceara Harrington”, I said instead, voice flat. “We had a thing once, when we were twenty. She says a kid came out of it.”

Antoinette’s eyebrows shot straight up to her hairline at that. “Holy shit. Serious now?”

I nodded. “Seemed like it anyway. I’m meeting her tonight to talk about it.”

“Jesus.” Strange mixture of disbelief and compassion. “I can see why you lost the head for a second there. How did that talk go? ‘Howya Steve. Long time no see. Oh, by the way, your kid is doing great in school. Thought you should know. Kay. Great. Bye.’”

“Less words. Same message”, I nodded.

We walked to the car in silence, wrapped in cold, damp December air and our own thoughts. Then, as we were getting in, I said: “It’s a girl.”

“Congratu-fucking-lations”, came Antoinette’s dry reply. “Want me to stop at Penney’s on the way back so you can buy her a tutu?”

I gave her a blank stare. “She might not even like ballet. I wouldn’t know.”

Blank stare straight back at me, twitch of her shoulders. “She’ll have to, now. Tell her daddy’s here now and daddy says you’re wearing the tutu.”

And just like that, out of nowhere, we were both snorting with laughter, because all of it was too bizarre to even take in.

“Fuck me”, she managed breathlessly. “Bet you didn’t expect that when you got up this morning.”

“I have a kid”, I said, still laughing, but those words stopped us, and the entire thing made a sharp hundred and eighty degree turn from hysterical back to fucked up.

On the way back to Dublin Castle, Antoinette’s driving was even more reckless than normally. Risk of whiplash every time she turned or braked.

 “So you’re meeting your woman tonight”, she said eventually. “Where?”

I gave her the name of the pub, and she nodded.

“Want me to come by after she leaves?”

“What, in case I go mental after that talk? To hold my hand, you mean?”

She shrugged. “I need a pint anyway, after all _that_.” Tilt of her head, back to that light gray stone and the pillars and neat little rows of windows at Trinity that we’d left behind.

“I’ll text you when she leaves”, I promised.

 

The pub wasn’t a cop pub, but it might as well have been, going by how it was furnished. It was still relatively early, so the whole thing was mostly deserted, save for a few regulars.

The dim lights were no match for the all-absorbing winter darkness that had settled outside. Same as the light from the streetlamps. Small pools of brightness, feeble and dismissible as blobs of color dumped into a vast, dark ocean.

Ceara was there, waiting for me. The closer I got – walking slowly, taking my time, the eyes of those regulars following my every move – the less she looked like the girl I had known in Templemore. Hours before, outside the squad room, my brain had automatically overlaid her actual image with the picture of the girl from back then. Young. Beautiful. Now, in this setting, suddenly she looked like disappointment and crushed dreams only held together by skin and hair products and a lot of effort. Her clothes, I noticed, were nice, but about a year past their best-by date, which told me that her current budget wasn’t what it used to be. She was like one of those rare pictures that change entirely when you look at them, flicker madly back and forth between image A and image B until your head spins. The vase and the two faces. The young woman and the old woman.

“Stephen”, she greeted softly, as I took a seat next to her. That voice, gentle as a breeze combing through your hair. _Young woman._

“Ceara, hi.”

Insecure smile, thin wrists, new bright red nail polish already coming off in chips. _Old woman._

“How was work?”

I didn’t know whether to admire her for making an effort at small talk or groan in frustration instead. Couldn’t have told her much about work if I’d wanted to. The Ben O’Donovan case was an ongoing investigation, after all. But after a second’s hesitation, I decided to play along. Or make it seem like it.

“Alright, yeah. Can’t complain. Antoinette Conway, maybe you still remember her? She’s my partner now.”

Ceara’s eyes widened in recognition. Of course she remembered Conway. She had been two years below us in Templemore, but beautiful women, they notice each other.

“Fair play”, she said, forced that smile again. “I was only delighted when I heard that you were on the Murder squad now.”

How did she hear anyway? That was something I needed to find out. But I wasn’t going to ask outright.

“Thank you. I’m happy about it, too. See, we’re working this case at Trinity at the moment, and… Hang on.” I stopped, like something had just occurred to me. Put on a frown, too, for good measure. “We interviewed this girl the other day. Melissa Harrington.”

It was Melissa, not Melody. I had checked the file again. “Is she at all related to you?”

The smile was genuine, this time. “Mel, yeah”, Ceara nodded. “She’s my sister.”

Ceara was my age, Melissa was eighteen. I did the math in my head, and Ceara caught me at it.

“Half-sister”, she amended. “My da had another baby. With another woman.”

She said it too quickly, gave it a shrug like it didn’t mean anything. Conflict there, clearly. I decided not to push it.

“Is that how you found out where I was working?”, I asked instead, friendlier than I was feeling.

She nodded. “Mel brought your card home, yes. And then I saw your name and you were on the Murder squad, just like my father when we first met. Anyway.” Shrug, half-embarrassed, half-defiant. “Mel bringing that card home and leaving it on the kitchen table. When I saw your name, it seemed like a sign.”

“So you came to me”, I concluded. “Finally.” Tried to force the bitterness out of my voice. Failed.

She glanced up at that, wide-eyed. “Look, I know I should have come to you earlier. Only it wasn’t easy, okay? I didn’t know how to approach you, didn’t know what to say. And then it seemed like too much time had passed and… You know.”

“You couldn’t have given me a call”, I asked, flatly. “Doesn’t seem too difficult.”

“It was, though! Stephen, you have to understand, please! I dropped out of training when I found out I was pregnant. My dad was furious! He called me a disgrace. My mum said he was being unfair, but he didn’t care.”

Which, I figured, was probably when things had started going downhill between her parents. Lovely.

“The only person on my side back then was Dave. Maybe you remember him?”

Something tugging at the back of my mind. The name first, then a mental image. I remembered Dave.

“He was your boyfriend”, I said.

“Yeah.” She nodded, refused to meet my eye. “I told him the baby was his. We got married soon after. He never knew about you.”

“Wait a moment.” I put up my hand. She was fidgeting again. This part of the story was making her uncomfortable, which made me want to focus on it even more. “Let me get the timeline straight here. You told Dave the baby was his and he believed you. You were going out with him when I first met you, I think?” Nod of confirmation from her. “How does this add up, exactly?”

“Look. Stephen.” I didn’t like the way she was saying my name. Didn’t like the way she was biting her bottom lip now as she looked up at me, sheepish. “Technically, the night you and I… Well.”

“Technically you were still with Dave, then”, I finished, liberating her from having to say those words.

“It’s more complicated than that”, she insisted. But people always do. It doesn’t mean much.

I humored her anyway. “How?”

“Dave and I were going through a rough patch! I was angry with him that night. I was going to break up with him, Stephen! And then… then I was pregnant and I didn’t want to be by myself, so I… so I married him.”

The sentence didn’t seem like something that should be uttered by a woman in this century. Ceara said it anyway. And I remembered suddenly. She had seemed different that night. Withdrawn, detached. Confused, probably. About to break up with her boyfriend. It all made sense now. And I couldn’t help the twist of anger and shame in my gut. Here I had been thinking that her and I had clicked somehow, that she’d wanted me for me. Really, she’d been just another girl on the edge of a bad break-up, looking for a fun night with some random guy, prove to herself she was her own woman, show her arsehole boyfriend who was boss. I had been the random guy. No more.

“Did yous stay together?”, I wanted to know. I had a feeling I already knew the answer. Now that she’d mentioned him, I really did remember Dave. Faintly, I remembered hearing about a wedding, too. And – and this hit me white-hot, like a slap in the face – I even remembered hearing about their kid.

From the way Ceara shook her head I could tell that the break-up had happened ages ago. No fresh wounds there, only delicate scar tissue. “He left us after three years. Fancied himself too young to be a husband and father.”

“I’m sorry.”

Small sad smile, an almost-wink. “Not really your fault, is it?”

We sat in silence for a while. She took a deep breath. I got myself a drink.

“How old is she now?”, I asked then. Had to force the words through my throat.

“Twelve”, Ceara told me, still with that same sad smile. Then, her hand jumped to her purse, remained there, hesitant. “Do you want to see pictures?”

I sucked in my breath, waited a second. Nodded, then. And Ceara got out her phone. The screen was cracked and I gave her the eyebrow at that. She laughed, a low, private sound.

“That, yeah. Niamh dropped it. She didn’t mean to, obviously. It was an accident.”

Out of that string of words, only one stayed with me. “Niamh.”

Her head came up, her eyes met mine. Lips parted, like she had startled herself by saying the name. “Yes. Niamh. Sorry, I forgot to tell you. Her name’s Niamh.”

It echoed in my head. _Niamh._ A nice Irish name. Not what I would have gone for, necessarily. But nice enough.

“Here.” Ceara was whispering suddenly. The smell of her perfume hit me. Sweet and flowery, trying too hard for something light and juvenile. _Old woman._ “That’s her.”

She passed me the device and I stared at the picture on the screen. Behind the veil of black cracks that reminded me of a spider’s web, there was the face of a girl with her mum’s eyes and that same straight blonde hair with that hint of red. She looked like any other girl on any old billboard, nothing special there that would make you look twice or remember. She looked like some girl, some random girl, somebody else’s girl, and for my mind to go from there to _My daughter_ seemed like an impossible leap to make. Still, I tried.

“Can I…”, I started, and Ceara nodded. I swiped left and started going through the pictures. Almost all of them were of Niamh. Which told me more about Ceara’s life than it told me about Niamh’s.

There was Niamh posing, a little awkwardly, in new clothes. Niamh on Halloween dressed as a vampire. Niamh with friends, lying flat on her stomach, on the floor, all of them grinning up at the camera. Niamh holding up a cupcake. (“She made the icing for that one.”) Niamh in summer, in a park. Then in a swimming pool.

Looking through these pictures already felt too intimate, but the one of this tiny girl in a bikini pushed me over the edge. I handed the phone back to Ceara like it had burned me. She pretended not to notice.

“You’ve missed out on so much”, she whispered. “And I’m so sorry.”

I nodded automatically, mumbled an absent-minded “Yeah”. She seemed to take this as encouragement.

“Do you…” Biting her bottom lip again, uncertain. “Do you want to meet her, Stephen? She knows about you. I already told her. She’d like to meet you! I asked. After Dave left us… She’s been alone with only me all these years. She’d only love to meet you, I promise!”

And there it was. The job taking over where it didn’t belong, me, people-pleaser me, nodding at her before I’d made up my mind. “Alright, sure. We can set up a date. I’d love to meet her.”

Ceara smiled brightly at that, the first time I’d seen a smile like that on her. Those same perfect teeth I remembered from training and a sparkle in her eye. Instantly rejuvenating. The picture flickered to image A again. _Young woman._

So we set up a time and a place for Saturday. “She’ll be so excited”, Ceara assured me.

Excited wasn’t exactly the word I would have picked. I felt more like I’d just agreed to jump off an airplane and test out a new variety of parachutes not yet officially approved for their safety.

“I’ll see you, then”, Ceara said, and I told her “See you”, and we actually hugged, this time.

I looked at her and image A and B alternated so fast, my brain couldn’t keep up. Then, she was gone and I was left in a cloud of too-sweet perfume, with a name and a face of a person who was supposed to be my daughter, and a feeling like maybe I’d already made that jump and was now free-falling.

By the time Antoinette arrived, I was on my third glass of whiskey somehow. I’m not normally the drown-your-sorrows type of person, but it’s not every day you are told that you have a twelve-year-old daughter.

“How’d it go?”, she asked. Then, with a pointed look at my drink. “That bad, huh?”

I laughed dryly, then took another swig. “I don’t know what to tell you. She told me the girl’s name. She showed me pictures.”

Critical flick of her eyebrow. “So to sum up, some woman you don’t even know anymore showed you pictures of some random girl. And somehow that equals you wanting to drink yourself into oblivion. Seems a bit extreme to me.”

I spun around at that. “She isn’t just ‘some random girl’, Antoinette! She’s my daughter!”

Antoinette remained unimpressed. “Says Ceara Harrington.”

I blinked at her. “What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything, Steve”, she told me, marginally less confrontative. “I’m just saying, how sure are we that this woman isn’t talking out of her hole?”

I stared at her. It seems ridiculous, but for some reason, up until then, that option hadn’t occurred to me. We check every witness statement ten times until it’s waterproof, treat everything with suspicion, and I had never even thought to consider that Ceara might be lying.

“You’re right”, I muttered, like an idiot. “The last time I talked to her, she was twenty. I don’t actually _know_ her. Oh Jesus. I didn’t even run her through the system.”

“Don’t bother. You wouldn’t find anything.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds, then she broke into a grin and I mirrored it.

“You already checked.”

“’Course I did.”

“When?”

“When you were out in the hall talking to her.”

I couldn’t help but internally grin at the fact that Antoinette had heard O’Neill say some woman’s name, waited for me to leave the room and instantly done a background check while I was still out talking to her.

“So she’s clean”, I said. “That’s good to know.” I tried not to let the relief seep into my voice. It did anyway, and Antoinette rolled her eyes at me.

“The fact that she apparently doesn’t sell crack doesn’t make her a bloody _saint_ , okay? She might still be full of shit.”

I frowned, contemplating this. Unsure what the thought that Ceara might be lying was doing to me. “Why, though? Why would she lie about the girl being my daughter?”

Antoinette gave me her ‘I-have-no-time-for-thick-people’ look. “Steve. Do you think she’s doing well, financially? Or generally?”

“She’s divorced. Her da wasn’t mad about the fact that she dropped out of training all those years ago. I’m not sure where she works.”

“Exactly.” Antoinette started spelling it out for me like I was a full-on mouth-breathing idiot. “Then, she finds out you’re on the Murder squad now. By the way: Melissa Harrington. That’s how she found out, isn’t it?”

“Her half-sister”, I confirmed. “Brought my card home. Ceara saw it.”

Antoinette sighed. “That’s my point. All these years, she doesn’t even think about you, grows more and more miserable. Then bam, she sees you’ve made Murder. She wants a piece of it. Her little girl is her way in.”

“I _did_ sleep with her, though”, I said, more defensive than I had meant to. “So it’s technically possible that – “

“Ah, God.” She cringed. “Spare me the details, please.”

Under ordinary circumstances, I would have never passed up an opportunity for a joke around Antoinette, but with the day that was in it, all I did in response was knock back the rest of my drink.

She joined me in my drinking. Told me that if I was hungover at work the next day, she’d kick my arse. Then told me the plan for the next day.

“At least one of those precious little kids knows something, and they’re not talking to us. We need to remind them that this isn’t one of their bleeding extracurricular clubs, Steve. Twice, we’ve talked to them on their home ground and, no offense to your relaxation techniques, but they’ve got us nowhere so far. Tomorrow, we bring them in. I’ve got us an interview room. For a few hours, anyway. In the afternoon, Breslin and McCann want it back, but until then, it’s all ours.”

“Great. We’ve tried the nice way. Now it’s time for you to start pushing them.”

We talked about the case a little more, then went silent again, both tending to our drinks.

“Jaysus, the face on you”, she said eventually. “Stop feeling so fucking guilty, will you?”

“I have a twelve-year-old daughter!” It came out sounding a lot more miserable than I had hoped.

“First of all, we don’t know that for a fact”, Antoinette reminded me sharply. “And second of all, so fucking what?”

“ _Twelve years_ I didn’t even know her! Twelve years she’s grown up without me! Next year, she’ll be thirteen. A teenager. I’ve missed out on all of her childhood. “

“Ah, now. I’d say you weren’t there for the worst bits. Those annoying years when they can’t even talk and only ever wail like sirens or throw up on you. And then after that, all they do is blabber nonsense all day long. Really, I’d say you dodged a bullet here.” Beat of silence. “Though to be fair, the teenage years must be hell, too.”

For a moment, I almost laughed. “Wow, you really love kids, don’t you? They should send you in to talk to those teenage girls about abstinence instead of the nuns. You make a much more compelling argument.”

“I mean it, too. I’m not just pulling this out of my arse to make you feel better.”

“It’s not just that _I_ didn’t know about _her_ , though.” The alcohol was upping the level of both self-pity and self-loathing considerably. “She grew up without me. Without a father.”

At that, Antoinette snorted. Her jaw clenched down suddenly, and just like that, she’d turned hard again. “Oh, please. Give me a fucking break. You think this poor girl grew up lonely and deprived? She was grand, trust me.”

“She grew up without a father”, I repeated. Normally, I would have known to leave it at that. The alcohol was making me slow.

“Oh, and you think she sat by her window every night, crying silent tears and wishing daddy would come home to save her? _Fuck_ that. Fuck _you_ , if that’s what you think. I’m sure she had a lovely childhood, with or without you. I know you’d only love to think this, but you’re not the center of her world! She was just fine without you.”

Finally, I copped: there was something there. Something that had nothing to do with Niamh. Thankfully, I had enough sense left not to push it.

“And anyway”, Antoinette said, two angry breaths later, a tiny bit less agitated. “We don’t know for sure whether the kid’s even really yours, like I said. If I were you, but, I’d like to find out.”

Quirk of my eyebrow. “Are you saying…”

“I’m saying if you meet her and get me back a hair or her cup or something, I’ll go talk to Sophie, see what I can do.”

“Nah”, I shook my head, skeptical. “Sophie wouldn’t just run private DNA tests for people.”

“Probably not. But I said I’ll see what I can do, didn’t I? And Sophie’s my mate.”

I thought this over, nodded then. “Right. When I meet Niamh, I’ll get you a sample.”

It wasn’t until I was on my way to the jacks that I noticed how drunk I was. Legs wobbly, room shaky. Some detached part of my mind told me that maybe it was time to go home. Meanwhile, the part of me still in control got out my phone. And called Ceara.

She took her time. Either she was working or with Niamh, or maybe she just wasn’t a pick-up-on-the-first-ring type of girl. Maybe, after all these years, she was still playing games with guys. I had no idea.

“Stephen?”, she asked when she finally answered, uncertainly.

“Howya, Ceara.” I was leaning against the wall, slurring my words ever so slightly.

“What is it?” She sounded nervous. “Are we still on for – “

“That was a shitty thing you did”, I interrupted her. She sucked in her breath at that, sharply. It had come unexpected.

“Stephen, what – “

“You cheated on Dave, that time. You made it seem to me like you were available, when really, you were still with your fella.”

“Is that what this is about? I said sorry. Look – “

“Not only that”, I talked over her. “That I can deal with, believe me. But then you didn’t tell me about my daughter for twelve years! Were you in Dublin all this time? I could have fucking ran into you at any given moment, did that ever occur to you? You lied to Dave about the baby being his, didn’t tell me it even existed, and now suddenly, you come back into my life, just like that, and shove those pictures into my face!”

“I didn’t _shove_.” Her voice was trembling now. “I asked did you want to see pictures of her and you said yes.”

“Of course I fucking did! You ask do I want to see pictures of my daughter, what am I going to say?”

For a moment, I thought the line had gone dead. Then, I heard her breathing.

“You’re drunk”, she said, quietly. “You drink a lot?”

“Oh, please! I’m not some alco, Ceara! The whole thing about having a twelve-year-old kid, that threw me a bit, is all.”

If she heard the biting sarcasm, she didn’t say. “Stephen”, she only told me, still in that quiet voice. “I know what I did wasn’t right. I already apologized and I’ll do it again. Hate me, if you want to. But it’s not Niamh’s fault. So please don’t punish her for my mistakes.”

More silence. Then, I sighed. Took a wobbly step. “Fine.”

“Do you still want to meet her?”

“I do.”

Breath rushing out of her on a sigh. Relief. “Glad to hear it. I’m going to hang up now. But I’ll see you then.”

I nodded, realized she couldn’t see me, said “See you” – again – and she was gone. The electric lights above my head looked blurry. When I turned my head quickly, the room dragged in my vision, like a lagging video. I made a mental note to get lots of water into myself before going to sleep that night.

When I rejoined Antoinette at our table, she gave me a suspicious look. “You took your time.”

For a second, I wanted to tell her about the call and what Ceara had said. Then, I swallowed the words. Making drunk phone calls wasn’t normally my style, and I knew she’d never let me forget about it if I told her. Instant ammo for all future teasings and slaggings.

“Let’s get out of here”, I only suggested instead.

We had work to do in the morning. And anyway, I didn’t plan on making the drunk phone calls a habit.

 

Antoinette’s pushing the next day worked. Suddenly, Ben, who had practically been a saint and _ohmyGod, such a good person, like?_ up until that point, turned into a boy who had been experimenting with the old drugs for a while now. Which didn’t exactly give us the killer, but gave the case some direction.

Antoinette tried to keep the gloating low-key, but couldn’t help triumph lifting her chin when she said: “Huh. Apparently, you can sit in a library and read fancy books in the afternoon, then do six lines of coke at night. Shocking.”

“Hey, I never said we should rule out drugs.”

“No”, she conceded, watching me with amusement. “But you wanted to. And you’re really annoyed that now they’ve come up.”

I thought about that for a while, thought about Ben O’Donovan. The boy’d had everything. His parents had been paying for his tuition and for him to live on campus. He didn’t even have to work to pay rent for some tiny little flat with moldy walls somewhere. All he had to do was pay attention in class and put some effort into writing his essays. His life, though I’d never known him, uncurled in front of me, landed in my palm soft as a butterfly, all pearly shininess and sepia tones.

“Ben had everything”, I said, in the end. “He threw it all away, and for what? A thrill? What, he started taking drugs because he was _bored_ of his perfect little life? Tell me that doesn’t piss you off.”

Antoinette didn’t seem too bothered. “Rich people are idiots”, she said, blank-faced. “This just in.”

I knew I should be used to it by now, ugliness at the bottom of every antique treasure chest. But I wasn’t, and part of me didn’t want to be, and I definitely didn’t like the ways in which this case reminded me of St. Kilda’s.

For the rest of the week, I used my little box again. Took Niamh’s name and face and every single thought regarding her and locked them away. Outside of work, alone at my flat, they threatened to rush back out, but I never let them. Normally, I read at night before I go to sleep, but after finding myself staring at the same page for at least ten minutes without taking in a single word, I decided to switch strategies. Did what Antoinette does to unwind instead. Which is frying your brain with crap telly until you pass out. I found this absolutely vile show called “Ex on the Beach” where a bunch of people who either hated each other’s guts or fancied each other were forced into a house near an ocean, resulting in either assault or intercourse, and after one episode of it I felt ready to claw my eyes out of their sockets, but at least I could go to sleep after and my thoughts had steered clear of Niamh. And I hadn’t drunk-called Ceara again, either. Which should not count as an achievement, but somehow felt like one.

“So you’re meeting the girl tomorrow”, Antoinette reminded me, the next day.

Those shrill voices off “Ex on the Beach” were still echoing in my head. No idea how Antoinette manages not to get them stuck in hers, sticky and annoying as gum. Much like the drunk calls, I didn’t think the crap telly was going to work for me, either, in the long run. This was a week of exceptions. 

“Is tomorrow Saturday?”, I asked, running a hand over my face.

“No. Tomorrow’s Friday. I was taking the piss.”

“Ah. Good.”

She stared at me. “Tomorrow’s _Saturday_ , Steve! Are you really this fucking spacey? Jesus Fucking Christ. I’m not letting you drive again until all this is over!”

 _It might not ever actually be over_ , I thought to myself, as outside the pattering sound of more December rain started up again. _If you have a child, it doesn’t simply go away again._

“You never let me drive anyway”, I only said instead.

 

We worked late that night, meaning I passed out soon as my head touched the pillow. No crap telly needed this time. And just like that, Saturday came around.

I’d let Ceara pick the place for our meeting. Thought it best to let her pick somewhere Niamh knew, no extra stress for the girl. So naturally, she’d picked one of those fancy cafes where half the food is vegan or at least gluten-free. Saturday morning meant the place was cramped with mammies or mammies-to-be, one hand on their round bellies, one on the soy latte in front of them.

Right before I stepped inside, my phone buzzed with a text from Antoinette.

**Get us that sample, yeah? Don’t bollocks it up.**

The words put a brief grin on my face. I appreciated them for what they were: an out. A way to see this meeting as business and nothing else; a detective trying to obtain an important DNA sample. I appreciated Antoinette offering it to me. I didn’t take it, but. I knew why I was there.

For a moment before I went in, I paused. A sudden vision held me back: the idea of all those heads snapping up, all those lovely manicured mammies dropping their lattes or their babies bottles to stare at me blankly until I turned around and left again, twenty pairs of eyes telling me I didn’t belong. Then, I got a grip and entered. And nothing of the sort happened. Everyone was too busy chatting or making click-clucking noises on their phones or wiping syrup off their kids’ faces.

Ceara and Niamh had found a table at the back for us. Niamh had her back to me, so Ceara spotted me first. I caught the exact second her scanning eyes found me and widened in recognition. Then, the moment Niamh spotted the look on her mum’s face and went rigid.

Slowly, she turned her head and across the room, our eyes locked. For a few seconds, everything else, the high hum of chit-chat and gossip, the babies’ cooing and whining, the clattering sound of cutlery, all seemed to come to a halt around us. I don’t know what I had been expecting from this moment. Rays of sunlight upon her face, turning that hair into gold and copper. Epic drums in the background, maybe.

The reality of it was both quieter and much more complicated. The girl looked me in the eye and all I felt was a strange twinge in my stomach, a million _imagine_ and _couldhavebeens_ tugging at my gut. Then, I took one more step, Niamh looked down. And it was over.

Ceara got up as soon as I got closer, looked like she was going to hug me, then sat back down again after a moment. “Stephen, hi”, she said with a smile, and the enormous relief was clearly visible. Some part of her had been scared I wasn’t going to show up.

“Hello, Ceara”, I said, returning the smile. Then, I looked down at Niamh. “Hi.”

“Hi”, she said. Little girl voice, high, but not too timid. Clear. Careful, but not too self-conscious. I liked that.

“You been waiting long?”, I asked Ceara, who shook her head quickly.

“Ah, no, not at all. You’re grand. We’ve already ordered something, though.” She gestured towards her drink. “I’ve got a Matcha latte. You could try that. It’s really nice.”

“’Matcha’”, I repeated dubiously. Caught the amused sparkle in the girl’s eye and went on: “That sounds like a place in South America.”

“Ah, you”, Ceara laughed. “It’s nice. Try it.”

Without looking up, Niamh said: “It’s _green_ , mum.”

I peeked into Ceara’s cup. “That’s right”, I said. “It is. Not sure I want to drink something green, to be honest.”

“It’s a form of green tea”, Ceara explained. “Just this powder, like?”

But I wasn’t paying attention. I was watching Niamh. She looked up again and gave me the tiniest grin.

“What have you got, then?”, I asked her, trying to ignore the things that grin had done to me.

“Hot chocolate”, she said, a bit coy.

“Solid choice”, I commented, and she giggled, squirmed a bit, then said: “It’s not green, anyway.”

I chuckled at that, she blushed and took a quick sip.

The three of us were silent for a few seconds and right away, that silence threatened to grow into something huge and dangerous, so quickly, Ceara killed it.

She started going on about Niamh’s life, telling me about her classes and her grades (“She does very well in school.” Quiet protest from Niamh, into her cup: “Mum, don’t _say_ it like that. Leona is much better than me. And so are tons of other people”), her hobbies (“She plays the clarinet. She has lessons once a week”) and her teachers.

It felt strange, the way she was going on about the girl, and at first, I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then, it hit me. It sounded a bit like she was trying to sell me something.

Meanwhile, Niamh didn’t look at me and only interrupted her mum for the occasional comment. I ordered a drink (coffee, black, the way Antoinette likes it, for once; I needed that bitter taste in my mouth to ground me), Ceara went on about her daughter’s life some more, then stopped. Got up to go to the bathroom, with one questioning look at Niamh. “I’ll only be a minute, okay?”

“It’s _fine_ ”, Niamh mumbled and Ceara smiled at us and left.

Awkward silence for a few moments. Suddenly, the girl’s head lifting. Those eyes meeting mine again. The room, instantly silent again.

“I don’t really like playing the clarinet”, she told me, quiet, but with certainty.

It seemed like she was offering up a secret. I weighed the words carefully. In this situation, they were pure gold.

“Oh.” I held her gaze. “Then what do you like?”

“Painting”, she said, instantly. She had been waiting to tell me this. “Colors. I do these watercolor paintings, you know…” Trailing off, uncertainty creeping into her voice now. She was offering up a lot, maybe wondering whether it was appreciated.

“Wow”, I said, carefully. “What kind of things do you like to paint?”

She shrugged at that. “Anything, really. Landscapes sometimes. Or people. Or animals. I made one of my best friend. A portrait, like. It didn’t really look like her. But she said she liked it anyway. I think the background was actually the best thing about it.”

It felt like we were moving towards each other over a frozen lake. Each step a risk. Place your foot carefully, watch for cracks in the ice. Keep going, eyes always on each other, slowly. Don’t slip.

“What did the background look like?”

That tiny smile again. “I used all blue and purple. Her favorite colors. And I made them so they, like, ran into each other? And they mixed? And it looked really pretty.”

“I bet it did.” I returned the smile, as much as I dared. Find another spot for your foot, make sure the ice will hold. Put your weight on it, then. “What are _your_ favorite colors?”

“I like them all, I guess. I like to mix different ones, see how they look together.”

“That sounds great.”

She only nodded. I wasn’t sure I’d said the right thing there.

“You’re on the murder squad”, she said next, out of nowhere. It wasn’t a question.

“Your mum told you that, yeah?”

She nodded. Tiny movement. Started fingering the handle on her mug. Tiny hands. “My grandpa was on the murder squad.”

“I know”, I replied.

Her eyes widened the smallest bit at that. “You know him?”

I shook my head. “No, I’ve never met him. But I knew that your mum’s dad was a murder D. Back when we were training together, people knew.”

Her eyebrows pulled together at that. I had no idea how much Ceara had ever told her about Templemore.

“That’s how you know mum”, she only said and I confirmed.

A few beats of silence. Then, Niamh looked up at me again, those eyes bright and awake. “You’re my father”, she said. “My mum says you’re my father.”

Once again, everything blurred around me, but Niamh was in focus, clearer than anything. Her face just like the girl on those photos, only a million times more intense with actual blood reddening her cheeks and those intent eyes and the tiny hairs at her hairline. She was wearing a light blue sweatshirt with a picture of a cat on it. Those hands, moving quickly, playing with the cup. She’d been a shadow in the back of my mind for days. Now, she was real: flesh, blood, bones, tendons, thoughts, words.

“That’s what she told me too”, I answered, feeling suddenly breathless.

“I thought I knew my father”, Niamh went on. I was amazed. The way she kept talking and looking straight at me, no more shyness, no fear. In that moment, she reminded me of Holly a little. “He left when I was three, but I’ve seen pictures. Mum has told me about him. I always thought he was my father. Not you.”

“That’s what I thought, too. Maybe we were wrong.”

She took a breath, opened her mouth to say something else, it seemed, but out of nowhere, Ceara was back. Niamh withdrew. Finished her hot chocolate. Didn’t talk. Watched me occasionally, little glances only.

When finally, Ceara said it was time for them to go, Niamh’s eyes found mine again. The three of us stood up and she said, quietly but firmly: “We should probably hug.”

I couldn’t read her, shot Ceara an uncertain look.

“We don’t _have_ to, you know”, I tried to tell Niamh. I was twisting myself into knots trying to get the tone right, trying to show her that just because this is what fathers and daughters normally do, she didn’t have to hug me, and that if she wanted to, she absolutely could. It seemed impossible to convey both at once.

“I know”, she only said, never taking those wide-awake eyes off me. “It’s fine.”

And before I knew what was happening, she took a quick step forward and next thing I knew, her arms were wrapped around me, her face pressed against my belly. This, too, made me think of Holly. That hug: brief, but firm. Dedicated, in a way. When her face was pressed against me, for a second she closed her eyes.

I kept mine open, though. Saw her hair fly up as she made that quick step towards me, spreading out like a handful of leaves tossed into the air. A single strand caught on one of the buttons of my coat. Still, I’m not sure what made my heart jump, then: the hug or the sight of those hairs wrapping around that big black coat button. _There’s your sample, Antoinette. That was easy._

When she stepped back again, my eyes were still on those hairs. I don’t think Niamh even felt them get ripped out, but I saw them come loose and stay on me, like fine gold threads.

Ceara thanked me for meeting up with them and I said something to the effect of _My pleasure_. When they left, Niamh didn’t turn around to catch another glimpse of me over her shoulder. She’d given me that hug. Now, she was leaving and not turning back. I liked that, too.

This café didn’t seem like the best place to randomly pull out an evidence bag, so I went to the jacks, moving carefully so as not to lose the hairs. Put them in clean plastic as soon as I was out of everyone’s sight. Texted Antoinette. **Piece of cake. I already have it.**

The mock-impressed reply was instant and made me grin.

**Good man. See, this is why you’re on the squad.**

She got back an equally-mocking **Good man yourself,** right away. Followed by **Does this mean Sophie said yes?**

I was just about to step out of the jacks, evidence bag with those hairs in my pocket, phone still in my hand, when it started ringing. Antoinette, I thought at first. But the number was unknown.

It stopped me cold. A case like this, no leads so far but plenty of potential ones, something like this reaches right inside of you. It could have been anything: my phone company giving me hassle, one of my sisters who had switched out her SIM card. But when you’re working a case, you don’t expect things to be nothing. I’d given lots of people my card. Lots of people who claimed to have slept safe and sound as Ben O’Donovan was being kicked to death outside of Trinity’s beautiful walls.

I stepped outside, fast as I could. Away from the mammies and Saturday morning chatter. Picked up.

“Detective Moran, hello?”

Shaky breath on the other end. Definitely not one of my sisters. I waited a few seconds, then said, immediately in the soothing voice specifically reserved for scared witnesses: “Can you say something so I know you’re there, please?”

One more shaky breath, then: “Hi.”

This was a good step. “Hi”, I echoed, matching the volume, not the nervous tremor. Then, when the girl on the other end remained quiet, I added: “You’re a Trinity student, yeah?”

She swallowed. “First year.”

I thought I remembered her. I definitely knew the voice, but the name didn’t come to me right away. “And you’ve got my card? Meaning we’ve had a chat recently. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“But there’s something you didn’t tell me then? Something you thought of now?”

Making it sound like it had simply slipped her mind, not like she had deliberately lied to us. Put her mind at ease in case she was worried about obstruction. She didn’t need reassurances, though.

“I should have said right away. But I just couldn’t. I thought he might find out somehow. He doesn’t even know I saw anything. I don’t want him knowing!”

She was getting a bit frantic now, talking in a rushed whisper. For a moment, I was torn. I wanted to keep pushing, get the story out of her, but she was clearly scared. And if a witness is scared, never just dismiss it.

“Hang on”, I said. “Where are you? Right now?”

A second of startled silence. She had been so focused on telling that story. “Outside”, she breathed. “I couldn’t call you from my room. Somebody could have heard me. I thought the jacks, but again, people walk in. I’m outside now, in front of the library. Nobody’s here.”

It was cold out. Nobody was hanging around anywhere for long. Only walking quickly from A to B with their heads down, getting onto busses or into cabs. Standing around outside was probably your best bet for making a phone call you didn’t want others to eavesdrop on. Smart girl.

 “What did you say your name was?”

She hadn’t said. Probably, she knew that. But it helped make the question seem like no big deal. Another quick inhale of breath, a beat of silence, then she said.

“Emily Burke.”

I remembered her, then. Your average pretty first-year drama student. She had seemed a little nervous during the interview, but we had put that down to the fact that a boy she knew had been found with his head kicked in.

“I know I should have talked to you before”, she went on. “But like I said, what if he found out? I kept thinking maybe he had seen me, that he would come find me and – But he never did. So he probably has no idea.”

“Who?”, I asked again, nice and easy, just like before. Like she had already given me the name.

The silence lasted slightly longer this time. I could imagine her in front of those library doors, sitting down maybe, pretending she was talking to a mate. Inconspicuous look around, maybe. And then, just like that, she gave me the name of the killer.

“Thomas Murdock.”

“Thank you”, I said. “For ringing me. Could you come to the front gate, maybe? I can pick you up now, so we can have a proper talk.”

She seemed uncertain. “If I just stand around at the gates…”

“You’re right. You should go back inside. It’s too cold, too. But I’ll be there in twenty. Can you meet me then?”

“Okay”, she promised. “I’ll be there.”

Now that she’d said the name out loud, at the prospect of somebody taking things from here, she sounded a lot more relaxed.

“Thank you, Emily”, I said. “I’m really glad you called me. I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Yes”, she breathed, all the tension out of her voice for that moment; pure relief. “See you.”

We hung up, and on my way to Trinity, I texted Antoinette to move her arse to HQ and get us an interview room. Far as she knew, I had been spending a lovely morning with my long-lost daughter, not talking to witnesses and working the case. But I knew she’d do it anyway, no questions asked.

By the time I arrived in front of those neat white pillars and rows of sash windows, Emily Burke was waiting for me in the archway, collar of her high-quality dark-blue coat turned up against the cold. Right when I spotted her, Antoinette’s reply buzzed in my pocket. **Interview room 3 okay?**

Like I said. No questions asked. **3 is grand. Bringing in Emily Burke as a witness,** I texted back in a rush before walking up to the girl. She didn’t seem too happy meeting me at Trinity, where people could see us together, but this had been the only way. A key witness in this case, clearly scared: I wasn’t going to let her wander through the city by herself.

We made it to Dublin Castle and from then on, things went smoothly. Antoinette had prepared everything and gone over Emily’s statement from the beginning of the week again, just like I’d hoped. Little trouble during the interview, too. One thing we weren’t entirely happy with was why Emily had gone out in the middle of the night. I had my theory and the way Antoinette moved next to me told me she thought it, too. Thomas Murdock had been one of the campus dealers, and Emily had been worried about coming to us for days. Until eventually, fear of Thomas had taken over her fear of us. Thomas had been waiting for somebody out by that wall, Emily had gone out by herself to do… something (“I couldn’t sleep and my head hurt. I just wanted a bit of fresh air!”). It didn’t exactly take a genius. I could tell Antoinette wanted to push, wanted to get this out of her – maybe to get the story straight, maybe to show to naïve old me that this cute, shiny-haired theater girl was popping pills and snorting lines just like everyone else; I wasn’t quite sure – but I gave her one look, thinking _Leave it_ hard enough at her somehow, and she left it. A favor to me, or, more likely: tunnel vision. The kind you get in Murder when you’re closing in on the killer. Like wolves smelling the blood of that injured fawn nearby, leave everything else. The witness statement was what we were after, so we could make our arrest. The rest didn’t feel important.

Emily didn’t need a lot of coaxing. Antoinette, if necessary, can play nice, too. And we made her feel at home, thanked her for talking to us. The story had been eating at her for days, too, and she was only glad to finally let it spill out of her. The look in her eyes when she recounted what she had heard, the horror, left no doubt in my mind that she was telling the truth. (“I stopped when I heard the voices. I recognized Thomas’s, but I wasn’t sure about the other one at first. They were fighting, you know? They were fighting about money. Suddenly, they got a bit louder and I realized the other one was Ben. He started buying off Thomas recently...” The quirk of Antoinette’s eyebrow said: _Fair bit of inside knowledge for a girl who_ wasn’t _involved herself._ She didn’t say anything, but, “and now Thomas was saying he still owed him, like, a lot. And Ben was saying that he was done with it, that his girlfriend didn’t like it. That he was going to stop and never buy anything from Thomas again, and – this was the part that made Thomas angry – that he wasn’t going to pay him anymore. Then, when Thomas said he had to, Ben laughed and he said ‘Or what? You’re going to call the cops? Guess what. I’m going to call them on _you_ if you ever give me hassle again. I’m done with this shit.’ And then I heard, like, a thud? And I looked around the corner, and I saw Ben on the ground. I think Thomas must have shoved him into the wall or something. And Ben was making these noises, like, he was in serious pain, I could tell. And Thomas just kept kicking him! Honestly, I think he must have been really high? I mean, I’m not trying to defend him, but he’s not normally like that! Sure, he loses the head sometimes, but that… It was like he couldn’t stop himself. He just kept kicking and kicking and I… I know I should have done something, I know…” Tears forming in her eyes. “But I just ran. Back to my room. I didn’t know what else to do. And, I mean, I was worried about Ben, but I figured… Thomas would realize what he had done and get help. Or if he didn’t, then, you know, it was right outside, I was sure somebody else would…” Sobbing too hard to talk, then.)

We got her to sign her statement and promised to keep her until we had arrested Thomas Murdock, so she was safe. Didn’t take us long to find him. Didn’t take us long til we got a full confession, either. Just like Emily had suspected, he had, in fact, been high. And shaken up about the whole thing as soon as he came off it. (Antoinette and I both mentally kicked ourselves for not spotting this. We hadn’t talked to him, as he had no direct connection to Ben that we knew of at the time, but he had been around. We should have talked to a wider net of people from the beginning, kept a better eye out for anyone who seemed distressed. Noticed Emily’s distress. Pushed her. And we would have had Murdock in cuffs on the first day.) Within ten minutes of talking to us, he broke down crying.

“I suppose he’ll get off on manslaughter rather than murder”, Antoinette said, a bit grimly, when we had his confession and were managing the rest of our paperwork.

“Probably. And maybe they’ll work out a deal with him. I’ll give somebody in Drugs a ring, yeah?”

The kid had, from what we’d gathered, been one of the main dealers on campus. Obviously, he knew the names of a few suppliers that the lads in undercover and the ones in drugs had bust their bollix to get at. They’d appreciate a heads-up that this guy was in custody. A few of them might like a chat. So I called somebody I knew in Drugs, did the good old networking. Always good to have a mate in Drugs.

And just like that, the Ben O’Donovan case was over. We got a pat on the head from the gaffer, and it was on to the next good old straightforward domestic. The look in Antoinette’s eyes said _Boring as shite_ , but I didn’t mind. Solve after solve after solve was how I liked things to go. At least for now.

 

Ceara asked did I want to meet up again. I told her that yes, I would, but not at the moment, because work was so busy, and sure, she knew what it was like, a big case on Murder, no time for anything else except eating and sleeping…

Load of shite. We were working domestics. I could have met up with her and Niamh again no problem. Part of me even wanted to. But instead, I was waiting for those results.

“Look, Sophie has a shiteload of work to do, as always”, Antoinette told me. “But she’s getting to it soon as she can. She promised.”

‘Soon as she could’ turned out to be Saturday night, a week on. Sunday morning, Antoinette texted me.

**Results are in. Sophie pulled an all-nighter. I’m picking them up right now.**

**Deadly** , I replied, then asked her if she could meet me at St. Stephen’s Green. I could have driven to her place, of course, or invited her to mine. But somehow, I wanted to do this on neutral ground. Also, it was the first nice day in what felt like weeks. No thick sheets of rain, not even a drizzle. And most stunningly of all things, the assortment of grays and whites in the sky had been replaced by a clear royal blue. It was the kind of crystalline, cold but non-windy winter day Dublin rarely sees.

Two days ago, Logan had been found. Strangled, just like the other little boy. After such a long search, it had been highly improbable that he would be found alive. Still, the news had come as a shock. Half the nation was mourning. The beautiful day felt like a tribute to the boy, serene sky, clean air, fierce December sun sparkling on frozen ground. It was ceremonial and moving, like bagpipes at a funeral.

McCann and Breslin, last time I saw them, looked like they hadn’t slept in days. I didn’t know any details, but I knew they were making arrests. Maybe, it occurred to me, Ceara thought I was working their case. _Ha ha. Yeah, right._ It would be years of hard work before the gaffer ever let Antoinette and me near a dead child. _Or_ a serial killer.

I was waiting on a bench when Antoinette found me. On a Sunday, off work, she had her hair in a slightly looser bun, single strands falling out. In this light, it softened her features.

“You eat yet?”, was the first thing she said to me when she sat down.

“What”, I grinned. “You think I can’t handle the news on an empty stomach?”

“I asked you a simple question, Steve. Did you eat yet?”

“I didn’t. Wasn’t hungry.”

“Here you go”, she said, a hint warmer, and handed me a turkey sandwich, then unwrapped one herself. With Antoinette, food is always fuel. Me, I like to cook something fancy every once in a while, put some effort into it. She always gives me the eyebrow for that. Eating, to her, is like charging a phone. Annoying, but it needs doing on a regular basis.

“You know”, she said, mouth full, chewing methodically. “You owe me big-time for this.”

“For this?”, I joked, holding up the sandwich.

“Yeah”, she played along. “The paternity test is no big deal. Don’t mention that. But the sandwich you better thank me for on your knees.”

I chuckled, then said: “I owe Sophie.”

“Her, too.”

We finished the food, then Antoinette gave me a slantwise look.

“What?”

“The girl”, she said. “What’s she like?”

I thought about it. Our joke about Ceara’s _matcha whatever._ The hug. The walking away without a look over her shoulder. “She’s great. Confident, like. Especially for a girl her age. And she likes painting. Does watercolors.”

That fetched a low, amused laugh from Antoinette. “Bet you just loved that! Does she play the violin, too?”

“The clarinet”, I grinned.

“Ah, shit. She’s perfect for you. And does she play polo, too?”

“Actually, she _has_ a horse, yes.”

 “Fucking _hell_.”

“I was taking the piss.”

We laughed again at that, Antoinette was shaking her head.

“Here”, she said then, suddenly sober again, reached into her satchel and handed me an envelope. I took it from her and it seemed to weigh about twenty kilograms, heavy with an entire future. I thought birthday parties, I thought watercolor paintings on my wall, _from Niamh, to Dad._ I thought weekends at my apartment, cooking together, watching a film. I thought briefly of Frank Mackey and his daughter Holly, the special status she had among her peers as a cop’s kid. Niamh could have that, too.

“Good Jesus”, Antoinette next to me said, on a noisy sigh. “Will you snap out of your daydream and just get it over with? Christ, Steve.”

“Hey, this isn’t _nothing_ , okay? If it were you –“

“If it were me, I’d rip that bleeding envelope open and get it the hell over with!”

We stared at each other belligerently for a few seconds, then I deflated. “Yeah. I suppose.”

I stared at the envelope. Tried not to take that pathetic, preparatory deep breath. Did anyway. Opening it felt like some insane coin toss. _Heads for fatherhood, tails for nothing._

When the paper was in my hands, it took a few moments to even understand it. There was a table with several columns. The columns were full of numbers and some were circled. My eyes wandered to the bottom of the page, where Sophie had written something in neat ink pen.

_Six of the DNA markers that I’ve tested differ. Fatherhood can never be proved with 100% certainty, but it can be ruled out, which is the case here. This man is not the father. I can say that with confidence._

If you’ve ever held the position of a plank for twenty seconds longer than you thought you could, then you know the immense feeling of sweet relief that washes over you the second you lay down and let your muscles relax. That’s what the first three seconds felt like, after I’d read the words. What came after is much harder to describe. It’s that feeling of relief turned vicious. Those muscles no longer pleasantly relaxed but turned to jelly. An empty room where your strong, confident heart was beating only a moment ago. Like coming home at last after a long, strenuous journey only to sit on the floor in a vacant, cold apartment, walls barren, looking around and wondering what the hell you were so anxious to come back to.

“And?”, Antoinette hissed, and reached out to grab the paper from my hands. I moved it out of her reach, folded it, put it back into the envelope. All I could do was echo three of Sophie’s words.

“Not the father.”

Antoinette frowned. “Did she give you a probability?”

“She says she knows for sure. I’m not the father.”

The sound of my voice, dead and hollow, hung in the air between us for a moment, then Antoinette swore under her breath, and said: “The lying cunt.”

“Maybe she didn’t know”, I muttered. My eyes were fixed on a spot on the ground, a few feet from the bench we were sitting on, on a patch of grass, glittering with frost.

“Like hell she didn’t!”

When I confronted Ceara later, this is what she said: “I had no idea, Stephen. You could have been her father, I swear. You or Dave, I couldn’t be sure. And I just wanted her to have a father, you know? You would make a great father, I knew that. And she was always desperate for one. It didn’t feel like lying. I told myself that it could be true, that it could be you. I _wanted_ it to be you. So much.”

“Maybe she really thought I was the father”, I told Antoinette.

“Either she lied to your face, which would make her a lying cunt, like I said. Or, she honestly didn’t know, but she made it seem like she was pretty damn sure, which is almost as shitty.”

For a second, I thought about defending Ceara, but that was automatic. Some misguided instinct. In the end, I shrugged.

“Yeah. I guess.”

I was still staring at that patch of grass, but I could feel Antoinette’s eyes on me.

“Fuck”, she said, in a low voice, incredulous. “You’re actually _disappointed_.”

Before she said it, I had been unable to name the emotion, but now that she’d said the word, it hit me full-on, like a physical thing. Disappointment sucking the air out of my lungs and draining the last bit of strength from my muscles.

“Yeah.” Still no tone in my voice. “Guess I am.”

At that, she laughed a strange, throaty laugh. “Oh, Steve. You’re hopeless, I swear.”

It hit me then, for the first time. For more than a decade, I’d only ever had one goal in life: to be part of the Murder squad. That was it for me. And I’d worked so hard for it, eyes always on the prize. I had never thought of anything beyond that. For me, there had never been an _After._

“Family life”, Antoinette said, more serious again when she saw my expression. “A wife. Little ones. Do you want that?”

I had never, not for one second, thought that far. My dreams had always focused on the squad. Beautiful suits, beautiful cars, that partner of my dreams. Coffee mugs in interview rooms, statement sheets on desks in the squad room, driving up to Dublin Castle in the morning and leaving late at night, walking to the car with your partner, steps in synch. Those had been my dreams for years and years, never anything else.

But now, it came into focus suddenly, like one of those pop-up books: in Three-D, with sharp edges and shockingly bright colors. Sunday breakfasts with the wife. Talking over coffee and eggs, hands finding each other automatically on the table. Morning kisses before I left for work. Night kisses when I came back in, long after her, and she held up the blanket for me. Kids, two or three of them. Brushing soft strands of hair out of their eyes. Reading to them sometimes, their small bodies leaning against mine. The weight of them on my lap. Those big eyes looking up at me. And all the pretty houses, and one of them: mine. A family: mine. Beautiful: mine.

“I don’t know”, I said quietly. “I think… yeah. Maybe I do. Want that.”

“Well, in that case”, Antoinette replied, looking at me intently, like she was seeing me for the first time. “There’s still plenty of time for that.”

It was getting cold now, and without saying a word, we somehow got up in the same moment. Started walking.

“Maybe I’ll get Niamh a Christmas present”, I said and Antoinette laughed.

“Please don’t. You’re just some creepy guy now. She’s not even related to you.”

“She’ll like it.”

“No, she won’t. And you can’t just pretend to be her father when you’re not!”

“Probably not, no.”

“Promise you’ll leave the girl alone?”

“Yes.” After a pause: “Ceara should get in touch with Dave.”

“You tell her that.”

“I will.”

After a while, Antoinette grinned at me. “Please promise you won’t start online dating now.”

I grinned back at her. “Maybe I will. Just to annoy you.”

“Oh, dear God, please. What is this, some kind of fucking midlife crisis? You’re too young for that!”

“Maybe I’ll die at sixty-six. I’d be right on time, then.”

“You’ll die even sooner if you don’t stop looking like you’ve been slapped in the face!”, she threatened, that familiar sparkle in her eyes.

We kept up the banter like that as we walked on, and I realized that _Now_ was pretty comfortable, too. I could stick around for a while, enjoy things as they were, and simply wait for _After_ to find me. 

 


End file.
